More on the PR for “Rough Enough” – Sites on the Web

If I were to take a moment to think on the pattern for setting up blogs, social media and book sites, I would definitely put WordPress and Amazon at the top of my list to get built up so that people have both a place to visit to see me and a place to hear what I might have to say that is worth while about my book or publishing. Then in order to make the professional links to groups who work in my field, write in my field and publish, I’d get my LinkedIn site set up. Then as the general knowledge that I’m out there spreads through the Ether, I’d go for the Facebook, Good Reads and Armchair General type of sites to keep people posted and give insight as to my likes, what I read, etc. Finally after these sites are all set up I’d go for the twitter. At the moment I am having a hard time understanding the use of the Twits since when I read the latest one liner it often has no meaning for me. Of course this is coming from a guy who had voice activated four family party line in Montana when he was growing up, (“Number Please!” says the operator, followed by “Oh, Gladys, can you get off the linea minute so the McBee’s can call the Doctor? You know how accident prone Ricky is….”) Of course you knew that Gladys and her buddies didn’t hang up, while you called, just hung in there silently and got all the scoop so that it could be all over town in the next 20 minutes – not a whole lot unlike Twitter today). Then we went through the use of words with numbers to make a 7 digit code (JUniper was our prefix to give JU6-2044 as the home phone number on our single party line with an actual dial on the phone. The biggest jump came in 1962 when we went to 10 digit numbers because lord knows nobody can memorize a ten digit number and 406-586-2044 became the new memory game. So now here we all are, back to the party line with computers. Isn’t privacy a boor! It’s so much fun to know what the neighbors are doing and saying! So now I’m getting into that theme of the Web and all it’s little idiosyncratic features. But I will say this it sure beats sitting out in the central Kalahari for nearly three months with no mail, only the BBC for radio and the only time I needed a long distance phone to have the whole grid for Ngamiland go down. So let’s use this Web stuff to the best of our advantage to sell our books now because who knows we might get a sunspot storm tomorrow and I hate to think what that would bring.